Authors: Jørn Lier Horst
Wisting lay on his back gasping for breath. Ken Ronny Hauge coughed and twisted round.
‘There’s a pair of handcuffs in the glove compartment of the police car,’ Wisting told Line, pointing to the barn.
Line ran in while Wisting dragged Ken Ronny Hauge to the drying frame. When Line came back he cuffed him firmly. Behind them flames stretched upwards, sparks crackling as they rose in the smoky air before dying and falling to the ground. For a moment Wisting felt like one of them. Burned out.
CHAPTER 63
Twenty minutes later, the courtyard was full of emergency vehicles.
An ambulance drove off with Nils Hammer. The dog patrol had found him on board the boat, fastened securely with steel wire to a metal drum. The doctor who examined him was optimistic.
Line was sitting in the back seat of a police car with her legs outside and Wisting stood beside her with a rug over his shoulders. The fire crew had overcome the flames, but there was almost nothing left of the house. It was smouldering a little here and there, but they were about to roll up their hoses.
Wisting stepped over the charred remains of the log walls into the ruins. Debris from the furnishings was scattered everywhere in a confusion of blackened and twisted rubbish. Settees, tables, chairs, shelves, worktops, cupboards, and drawers - everything charred by the flames and dripping wet from the firemen’s hoses.
He found the suitcase at the bottom of what remained of the staircase. The heat from the fire had forced it open. Wisting kicked at it with his foot. The contents had been consumed by the flames, but all the same it was not difficult to work out what had been inside. When he cleared flakes of ash from the top the original contents were easy to identify: bundles of banknotes.
He squatted down, trying to pick up a bundle, but it disintegrated between his fingers. So, this was what it had all been about. Money.
He brushed his hands and got up again. The investigation was drawing to a close, he thought.
Through the shouts and crackling on the firemen’s portable radios, he heard the familiar sound of his mobile phone. It was lying on the garden table together with the keys to the police car. The dog glowered at him from his position underneath it when he picked them up.
It was the doctor.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you, but have of course seen from the news that you’ve been busy these last few days,’ he said.
Wisting mumbled an affirmative reply, but didn’t know if he had the energy to listen to what the doctor had concluded after studying all of his test results.
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,’ the doctor continued. ‘You are overworked. You risk a breakdown and becoming completely burned out if you continue at the same pace. How are you feeling, anyway?’
Wisting supported himself on a patrol car without answering.
‘Exhausted and weak?’ the doctor suggested. ‘Lacking energy?’
Wisting confirmed this.
‘Have you had dizzy spells?’
‘That too.’
‘Well, I’ve already written out a sick note for you. What you need is a long holiday. Relaxation. Do you think you can manage that?’
‘Yes,’ Wisting responded.
He received some practical advice before rounding off the conversation. Then he put his arm round his daughter, pulled her towards him and laid his head on her shoulder. The layer of clouds above them was about to break. The sun would soon shine through.
EPILOGUE
Wisting sat down to a breakfast of fried eggs and coffee on the terrace. Before he began eating he leaned back and gazed out across the sea without looking at anything in particular.
Two weeks had passed. He was feeling better and fitter. He wakened feeling more rested, and had regained a great deal of his energy. His days were filled with tasks that he had postponed for too long. Gardening and basic maintenance in the big house. The evenings had been long and warm, and he had spent them with Suzanne, eventually feeling his shoulders relax and his strength returning.
He breathed in through his nose and filled his lungs with the salt sea air that the breeze brought ashore.
When he had finished eating, he pushed his plate away and unfolded his newspaper. He leafed through the crime reports, as he had done every day for the past two weeks, but then stopped and had to turn back through the pages. He recognised a picture of a burned out building. The editors must have searched deeply through the archives before putting it into print. It was the same photograph as the one Daniel Meyer had torn out of a newspaper more than twenty years previously and that had been lying amongst all of his notes.
Wisting began to read. A former fellow prisoner had reported to the police that he had set fire to the washhouse on the farm out in Helgeroa on the orders of Ken Ronny Hauge. Assistant Chief of Police Vetti gave an account of the police’s theory that Ken Ronny Hauge and Daniel Meyer had been together on the safety deposit box robbery in 1991. Ken Ronny had hidden the haul and let Daniel Meyer believe that the money had gone up in flames while he was in prison. Eventually when the newspapers were describing how the exchange of the old banknotes was part of the case of the severed feet, Daniel Meyer realised that he had been deceived. His confrontation with Ken Ronny had resulted in his death.
He drank some coffee and read on. The remainder of the article was a review of what had emerged in the media coverage in the days following Ken Ronny Hauge’s arrest. The newspaper quoted
Verdens Gang
, which obviously had access to Hauge’s police statement. The plan to convert the old proceeds from the robbery into legal tender had been concocted after his grandfather died. He had seen how he could use a fictional distribution of inheritance as the pretext to get help from his grandfather’s old friends, an inheritance that had to be kept secret to avoid questions from the authorities.
It was never the intention that anyone should die
, Ken Ronny Hauge was quoted as saying. Torkel Lauritzen had been the first victim. He had become unwell after the last sum of money was taken out of the bank in Sandefjord and died in the passenger seat of the car. From fear that the whole plan would collapse Ken Ronny had decided to dump the body at sea. The course of events was largely confirmed by Audun Vetti, who established that the cause of death was most probably cardiac arrest, but that there could all the same be consideration of charges of desecrating a corpse and failure to discharge the obligation to give assistance.
The ballistic investigations confirmed that the other victims had been shot with the pistol that was found on the bottom of the sea. The final analyses had also confirmed that this was the weapon that had been used to kill the policeman at Eikeren. In his statement, Ken Ronny claimed that it had belonged to Daniel Meyer’s grandfather.
It was strange to be a passive spectator in an investigation in which he himself had taken a leading role. Wisting took a gulp of coffee, and was leafing through the paper to the television pages when there was a knock at the front door.
‘Hello,’ he heard Line shout.
He called back to let her know where he was.
Line sat down in the chair opposite.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve just eaten. Do you want anything? Coffee?’
She shook her head.
‘They’ve found the last corpse,’ she said.
Wisting raised his eyebrows.
‘They just announced it on the radio,’ she explained. ‘A dead body has been found in the sea outside Hummerbakken. It was missing a foot.’
‘Otto Saga,’ Wisting declared.
‘Ken Ronny Hauge’s not so silent this time,’ Line continued. ‘He’s admitted all of it, except the police murder.’
Wisting nodded. They would probably never find out what had really happened on that dark September night in 1991 but, like Line, he did not believe that Ken Ronny Hauge was necessarily the one who had fired the fatal shots.
‘It’ll be a strange trial,’ Line went on. ‘To stand accused of the murder of the man who actually was guilty of the murder you yourself served sixteen years in prison for. The worst thing is that I don’t think any of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for the punishment he got that time. I don’t believe he really was evil. I think it was jail that made him like that.’
Wisting drank his coffee. ‘How’s your interview project going?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to Bergen,’ Line replied. ‘That’s actually why I’ve popped in to see you. I’m leaving this evening.’
‘To Bergen?’
‘I’ve had the deadline extended. I had to find a new interview subject, of course.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Maybe you can remember the case. Trond Furebo. He was found guilty of murdering a prostitute and a journalist who wrote about the case.’
Wisting tried to think back, but didn’t think he remembered it. That was how it was, far too many cases.
‘Did you get yourself a new camera?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘I’ve borrowed one from the editorial team.’
The cat came creeping over, interrupting the conversation about the investigation and what had happened out at Helgeroa two weeks previously. It jumped onto Line’s lap and settled down.
Wisting got up, and went into the kitchen for a couple of slices of boiled ham. He tore them into pieces and threw them down on the terrace.
‘You’re spoiling him,’ Line said as the cat jumped down.
Wisting smiled. She was right, but he didn’t see any reason why he should stop spoiling the tousled cat.
‘When are you going back to work?’ Line enquired.
Wisting went over to the railings. ‘Soon,’ he said, looking towards the horizon. He could make out banks of clouds in the distance.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46